and Texas, to the one hundredth
degree of longitude west from Greenwich, and with that meridian south,
to the Rio Grande and the Gulf--dividing the western from the eastern
half of Texas--we circumscribe very fairly the exact region of country
in which the slaveholding epidemic is violent and intense, and throw
within the limits of the great Northern Republic all of the region in
which freedom is already established, and all that in which, as above
stated, there was still a surviving and half vital tendency in freedom's
behalf.

In addition to a boundary so favorable to ourselves, and forced by our
commanding position upon our unwilling adversary, we might have imposed
upon her such other terms in relation to her foreign policy,
custom-house regulations, and the like, as the extent of our power
should have authorized. We might even have consigned the Southern States
to a species of provisional and _quasi_ nationality, with the claim and
expectation of their ultimate return within the pale of the Union, when,
through the severe ordeal of military despotism or anarchy at home, or
from other causes, they should have purged themselves of that
institution, adverse to all our policy, which has been the sole cause of
all our woes.

Still more important it would have been, under the theory of this
essentially victorious position of the Northern people, that Northern
opinion and the purposes of Americanism on this continent--the assertion
and defence of freedom and of free institutions of all sorts--should
have been distinctly, peremptorily, and finally impressed upon the
character and future career of our own Northern nationality. While those
portions of slaveholding territory which would still have remained
within the Union, would have had, of course, to be treated with courtesy
and consideration, if the institution of slavery were to have been
permitted to survive, they should have been thoroughly made to know from
the first, that slavery among us was no longer to be regarded as a
perpetuity; that it was only tolerated provisionally; and that we, as a
people, had no intention of permitting its renewed influence in the
councils of the nation. Cut off as these States would then have been
from the possibilities of carrying on an inter-State slave trade with
the Southern confederacy, the institution of slavery would have lost
much of its value and potency; and allied, as those States would have
been, as a small minority, with